Twitter Space participated by Kiigen K. Koech, gregariously.eth/.sol./lens/.⌐◨-◨, Dave Meier, Zealous, Tech In Schools Initiative, Nick | Grow as an Average Joe 📈, Cash Money Kev, Daisy, Temp Button, Odhiambo Ogola - HSC, ChrisB🔥, Alien Protocols, WE THE PEOPLE ?, ⱣΦ₩ΣɌ, 💝HeartThrob_FAE💞, Atif Hafeez, @D-Sembe, phantom.observer, Sushiwill25, Hugo Kane, Alieu Senghore, Ryan Lamar

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All right, we are back with Innovators Think Tank week number 9.

I hope everybody had a killer week and is feeling like today's the day for some collaboration because indeed you are right.

Cash Money Kev, Matia, Ryan, welcome on in.

Nick, 1 of our guest speakers already in the tank, nice and early, right on time.

We'll go ahead and get you a speaker invite.

We're gonna get a number of our other folks in here.

I'd love to chat with you for a bit, learn more about you, your experience.

I wanted you to be on the tank for a number of reasons.

I saw you in the innovators lounge a little bit before the tank.

Yeah, I just wanted to like, see what's up and you know what we were up to today before we actually get on the space.

We're doing a little powwow, all together, a couple of the co hosts, but we're ripping it live.

I'm a little bit crunched for my actual thesis work.

So yeah, this has been like a huge de-stressing, like separate thing that I'm doing right now.

Steven's been around for a number of weeks now, and I gotta tell you, he dropped into our Discord channel and started out in his perspective, and wow, it's really nice to see you here back another week.

You guys know the deal, the first 5, 10 minutes here, we're gonna make sure we get all of our speakers round up get all the businesses in here and then we'll get going.

So give me a quick moment and then we'll be we'll be rolling.

Stephen always good to see you my friend.

Nick and the panel slot is yours if you want to drop up you're you're welcome to.

Luke welcome on in and Raja, always nice to have you.

So here's some questions to get the space cooking.

What do you guys think of innovation metrics and what kind of metrics can we discuss about innovation?

How do you track the innovation aspect of your idea?

But I would love to invite Ryan Lamar up here to talk about some of that, if you would like to come on up.

And Phantom, just so you know, Raja, just so you know, Ryan, He did study innovation at a university for many years and understands this very well.

So you asking these types of questions, hey, how can we measure and track our progress here is really interesting.

And I wonder if he has any initial thoughts for us.

Ryan, if you want to share anything, feel free.

I hope Saturday's treating you pretty dang well.

We're on week number 9 of the Innovators Think Tank.

We're bringing in some pretty awesome projects, businesses today.

Dave, there's 1 that I think you're just gonna love.

I talked to this dude on the phone for about 45 minutes before this space.

So he should be joining us here in a little bit.

1 of these tools are just really, really interesting.

Which might be interesting for people, I think, when there's time to talk about stuff, it's about the definition of words.

I can't wait to hear something about that.

So I'll tell you a little bit about this tool before, you know, just ahead of time, Dave, because I feel like it's something you'd really like a tip off.

Hey, just so everybody here knows, this is Nick's first week on the panel, but I really kind of honed in and wanted him to come up because I felt his content was so relatable that so many of us are missing this key market of advice that can bridge people away from maybe working where they don't want to into creating their dream.

I felt like Nick was preaching a lot of this.

So even before I share some of this, Nick, I wanna give you the stage to share some of your thoughts or introduce yourself.

You know, a number of people in this space are some pretty awesome speakers.

This is the first Twitter space that I've ever done.

So there was a couple minutes I was trying to figure out how to get on as a speaker, but I think I got it figured out now.

But yeah, so just a little background about me.

I reached a $100, 000 net worth in about 3 years, just working blue collar.

I'm a trim carpenter is my nine-to-five so I do like all the all the fancy stuff in the house like crown molding and built-ins and stuff like that.

But basically what I did was I got very intentional about how I was going to grow my wealth.

I developed a number of systems and really brought my education up and honed my mindset to get to where I got to.

I kind of realized I was like, hey this might be Super helpful to the everyday person because you know, I view myself as an everyday person.

I got a family But I was able to do what I've done and I'm you know on a good trajectory.

I figured You know, why not share what I've done I'm sure it'll help someone And so now I have this personal brand and I offer coaching, I offer digital products and I just try to share and contribute as much value as I can every day.

Just adding value to the community from what you know and what you've seen work for you is just incredible.

You know, obviously for me, part of this think tank is this idea that we all have different experience.

And when we can come together and start asking questions about each other's journey, about where our hard points are, you know, what we're able to do is really push each other forward.

You know, collaboration is the new currency.

And the quality of these questions determines the quality of our results.

I think people need to understand that and appreciate the good questions that they get.

And that's why I have you in here, Nick, because I think that you're going to post some really good questions, give some really good advice.

I really appreciate you taking time on a Saturday to join us, my friend.

I'm really super appreciative of the invite.

Just to touch on what you said, I think stuff like this, it goes a long way in demystifying stuff for people.

I'm speaking from the perspective of an average Joe, because that's who I'm trying to get at.

I think for the average person, they come on Twitter and they see a lot of people talking about, like, oh, I have a million dollar network, here's how I did it, blah, blah, blah.

Or, I mean, there's some super successful accounts that don't really provide that much value in terms of pathways to get to where they're at.

So I think stuff like this is good for anybody to come in and listen and get a feel for how to do things, but also kind of taking away the mystery and like, okay, anybody can do the stuff that we're doing.

And especially when, you know, people can condense that experience in something that seems mystified and seems like, you know, a fictional world of success.

If you can condense that down into things that people understand, action steps, things that make sense.

And Nick, even while we're just talking about some of the stuff, which I think is very powerful, I noticed Atif and Phantom got their hands up.

When a blue collar hands-on goes hand in hand with the white collar thinking, the magic can happen.

So, something to bear in mind when we are talking about innovation in regards to the blue college jobs that we see around.

That's the entrepreneurial basis basically.

Atif, this is just, spaces like these, I feel like really create an opportunity and you know, everybody joining us right now, we have Samuel, Daisy, Uzama, Xavier, just new folks in the tank.

I wanna take a moment to tell you guys, this is Innovators Think Tank week number 9.

Okay, We've been doing this for 9 weeks in a row.

Every Saturday we come together, we grab projects, businesses, ideas, we bring them to the front of the tank and we collaborate with big thinkers.

If you have any thoughts along the way, please do post them in the comment section, okay?

Down there in the bottom right, you have a chat bubble.

So if you guys have any thoughts and you don't wanna hop up on stage, just feel free to post them there.

Yeah, Josh, thank you again for hosting this space every week.

I like what Nick and Atif had to contribute.

And what I believe is that it is the idea of problem solving.

So when we are solving many problems, we come across a lot of successes and failures, but with the right intention.

Like I think that design thinking like unlock some level of like problem solving that regardless of like white collar or blue collar, right?

It's just you operating problems in different paradigms.

So I think that that is the critical aspect of innovation.

So you need to like capture that creative aspect but learn to apply it in like different fields.

And you know, like the analogous thinking in a way is very helpful there.

So, yeah, I love what like Nick has done and like the idea of like sharing this wisdom because I'm here.

I'm here to learn and I'm here to see what these guys have to offer because they are the ones who have built the successful projects today, right?

So you have to understand what makes that success.

And then you have to choose how to make that even better tomorrow.

So I think that's what the innovation think tank is all about.

And I'm going to love hearing more about all the speakers today.

This is Phantom's, I think third week in the Think Tank.

And also we recently launched a Discord channel guys.

So we continue the think tanking even after the Twitter spaces.

We have our co-host, they'll be putting a link up in there if you wanna go check that out, it's very interesting.

But I wanna say, you know, big shout out to Phantom.

He's been in there really guiding a lot of that conversation helping to moderate that community, just do a wonderful job.

So I want to shout him out and just say great stuff there.

Also, I want to say, hey, we have a bunch of people in here.

Hey, let's go ahead and get more people in here.

It doesn't cost anything for you guys, okay, in the bottom right or in the upper right to share the link.

Go ahead, share it with anybody that might be on Twitter right now and let's get this out there.

I think there's plenty more folks who will love real-time innovation and you guys are going to love the business and the product that we're talking about first today.

I had the privilege of spending a while on the phone with the owner or earlier, somebody who's been taking this project by the horns for a number of years.

Nick, man, I'm excited to hear your input along the way and talk more about this.

So without further ado, guys, let's go ahead and bring up and chat for a moment with, oh, I see Dave's

Can I just ask a question before we start?

Because we have different people sharing different stuff I think it would be good as we start to frame what people are looking for as well.

I think it's important to frame the discussion.

So obviously there's a diverse array of projects and businesses and ideas that we can spar with and help, Dave.

And there's also a diverse array of projects and businesses that can help us become better innovators.

And I like to share both of those in the tank.

And I think even with the products that come up and they share these with us, we have an opportunity to introduce the ways that we wanna see them evolve to work better for us.

That's exactly what I mean, because I shared Focus Drivers initially for feedback on where we could go, but when I shared it last week, then I know some people were like, what are you looking for, Dave?

And it was more, I was sharing with other people, so I was giving some knowledge.

So is it like we're here to consume or we're here to kind of balance ideas and spur?

I think today it's gonna be a lot of both.

And anybody who's listening right now, if you guys aren't on stage, I really want you to use that comment section.

If you have some thoughts along the way to share them.

This is the place where folks who are pioneering great ideas and bringing them to impact are here to share that with us.

Some of them are much further along than others.

And I think today we're gonna be in a position where we're working with somebody who really has a product in hand and is something that is out there.

I think it's something that's very valuable.

So with that being said, Dave, hopefully that's enough sort of framework.

Just knowing the type of people that are in this tank, feedback is always welcome.

We love that feedback in any business that's in here.

I think part of being in here is getting that feedback from users.

I believe he'll be speaking from 1 of those 2 accounts, but we'll let him come up on stage, introduce himself, and then we'll do a little bit of setup to talk about the work he's involved in.

I do wanna say, Gregorius, before you joined, I was telling everybody about this tool and about the power of it to, I didn't leak anything or tell him any details, really haven't said much of anything, but the power of this tool in the new age of, you know, audio, all of us here sharing our value in real time, how we capture that and what that looks like.

So I wanna pass it over to the owner of Zealous and have him share a little bit of what he's doing if he's there.

But I am Gregarious, I'm also in the, My account's in the audience, but I'm speaking through the Zealous account.

I'll give a quick introna to Dave's question.

I'm happy to share some of the things we'd be happy to receive today.

So just for background, I'm a repeat entrepreneur.

I've done a number of bootstrap startups and this is my third venture-backed company as well.

I think much like Josh, I actually spent a stint teaching in innovation and working as an EIR in some larger companies, as well in between my last company and this 1.

I've been through the accelerators, did YC for my last company, was acquired in 2018.

And then my current company has done Techstars here in Boulder.

And just to quickly summarize, I guess, what Zealous is.

So fundamentally, you know, Zealous is on a mission to help solve for a very simple problem, which is that most folks who create content are not great marketers and most people who are great marketers are likely not often always the best content creators.

And so what ends up happening ultimately you know from background you know I've been a creator since 2003.

My first blog was in 2003, started my first podcast in 2004.

I've done a number of podcasts and blogs since then.

But what I found in that in that entire time was that creating content wasn't really the hard part.

It was sort of the editing and curation and the packaging and the marketing, you know, as a solo person being a creator or as even someone, even in a small company where we're always strapped for time.

I just never had that skill, that time really to dedicate, and honestly the passion to sort of dive into doing those tasks.

And so what Zealous does is actually try to leverage both artificial intelligence and audience intelligence to help you eliminate as much friction as possible in the process of growing your audience and getting your content in front of the people that it needs to be in front of.

So we do that by a number of different tasks and tools in the platform.

Everything from transcription to video rendering to dynamic summaries, AI summaries, etc.

And very soon we'll have the posting fully integrated as well.

And the ultimate goal though is to help anyone who makes content, regardless of how good you are at making content.

And just for comparison, my wife works at a billion dollar startup, but she's like the 1 person on the community team.

And so she still has to go fish for episodes when she needs to find help to market things and pull things out.

And so what I found is it doesn't matter how big your team is, you always you never have enough resources.

And so we want to get what you are sharing as quickly and effectively and efficiently out to your audience and to new prospects and leads so that you can ultimately grow your audience, grow your reach, grow your business.

And Zealous, if you wouldn't mind, just Right before we go into some of those things that you're hoping for today, if you don't mind if I just add a little bit, just having used some of this on the backend, even before we kind of break into some of the intricacies of the tool, I just want to share with folks the power of this.

We're all in Twitter spaces right now, and I can imagine you guys are in other Twitter spaces talking and providing incredible value.

And what I would love to see and would love to see happen is you guys being able to capture that value and share it with your audience as well.

The Twitter spaces should not be lost in the abyss And we certainly shouldn't have to screen record our, our, you know, the recordings of the tank, or whatever space you're in, in order to make that happen.

And so this is, you know, very interesting, I think something that that a lot of folks will find very interesting.

And so, you know, Gregorio, so I'll give it back to you to share some of the things that you're looking to kind of get out of this today.

You know as Dave had mentioned, but also I want an opportunity for folks to kind of get, you know, a deeper look at this and we can talk more about it.

And for the record, Josh literally saw us at Woodzell's as like this morning.

And we did jump on a call for 20 minutes and I sort of gave him a quick tour.

So, somewhat of a planted show, I guess, right?

But yeah, I guess like what we're looking for is ultimately, as Josh pointed out, everyone here is in a space right now.

You're familiar with the platform, you're familiar with this shared role that we have now in content creation.

Hosts are wonderful, and when you have a great host, you have even better outcomes.

But I think these kinds of conversations in general with social audio like this, we all are part of the conversation.

And so all of us are creating in some some form or fashion.

And so how do we use that to sort of grow the relationships and the reach that we have?

So I guess that, you know, things that we're looking for, we are live, we're in production.

We've been going since Like basically like about February of last year.

So, you know, we're definitely looking for folks to come and kick the tires and give it a try.

We're looking for, you know, suggestions.

You know, right now we're in that phase where we've got a product And I would say we're encroaching on fit, but I wouldn't say that we're fully there yet.

And I think some of that is really just picking, identifying the right audience where, you know, we can be that 10% better, you know, for the needs.

I mean, I think we're 100% better in some ways, but some of it is awareness and some of it, I think, is sort of the market segment.

So, you know, looking at strategizing and talking about like opportunities there are always going to be valuable.

And then, of course, if there are ideas or feedback that you have, we'd love to hear them as well.

I also, Gregorios would love to put an example in there.

I don't know if you're okay with me taking the example or if you have it from that mastermind, if we can put it in the comment section or something and maybe get some of the folks to look at it.

But the point there is this morning, I just wanna touch on this a little bit.

I was in this group DM and I heard from the mastermind that happened last night.

I watched a 60 second snippet that was a beautiful thing.

It kind of reminded me a lot of like, the memories that you get from your photo album from your iPhone, or let's say, you know, Snapchat produces like a short video that kind of sums up and highlights that month for you.

But what it was doing was pulling all the incredible moments of that mastermind and a lot of the statistics and creating a meaningful way for folks to see that.

And that's, you know, for me, when I saw that right away, I thought, no kidding.

Like, not only is this something that, you know, is needed here right at the think tank, so we can condense our 4 hours into many 60 second clips and get other people some of this value, but so many of you are out there providing incredible advice, incredible insight all across Twitter in the form of voice in these communities.

And I'd love to see you guys capture those and share them with your audience.

I just shared a couple of examples of those wraps as we call them into the nest, if you want to check them out.

And so guys, while we're kind of chatting here, feel free to look into some of those wraps.

Of course, part of this feedback is maybe even sharing some ways that those wraps could feel a little bit better.

I know there's some different themes that are involved and we'll get into some of that.

We can talk about this, but look them over.

And this is a good place to start in terms of giving feedback, right?

You're looking at a real product from that.

See all Josh Hellman transcripts on Twitterspaces

Innovators Think Tank #9 🧠💭